“Late style arrives when you realise that you are: competent enough to write those things you wanted to write when you were twenty-five; impatient enough to have one more go at going all the way; angry enough not to allow anyone else to persuade you to do something else. At the same time, late style is cold, amused, contemptuous and savage about everyone you have been or ever tried to be. Late style is when the monster down there has finally had enough of you.”
Read MoreHow many brands and businesses I wonder, perform the promise rather than keep it, satisfying themelves instead with sending a double to the hard moment and hoping the audience won't notice the substitution? The airline that sells you a experience and delivers a call centre populated by underpaid contractors reading from a script at 11pm when your flight has been cancelled and all you need is a hotel. The hotel that puts "passion for hospitality" on its walls and a QR code on the table where a waiter used to be because they're "short-staffed tonight." The telco company that promises to make life simpler and whose customer service is a chatbot maze that would make Kafka proud. The bank that's all about being on your side and then restructures its branch network into oblivion. The food brand that tells you about its sustainable farming practices - knowing that there is no legal definition of "sustainable" as a marketing term.
Read MoreAI-readability is simply a new stress test for an old discipline: say what you are, mean it, make it legible, and let your decisions prove it. I will never get tired of quoting Dolly Parton – "find out who you are, and do it on purpose ".
Read MoreLike what do you do when your brand has become a prisoner of executional formula and wants accelerate growth with a real long-term brand platform?
That was the challenge facing Corona.
Read MoreBrand problems? I’ve seen a few…
Like what do you do when being a single malt whisky with a deeply authentic, hundred-plus-year-old story of craft and tradition isn’t enough of a reason to buy in an ocean of whisky with deeply authentic, hundred-plus-year-old stories of craft and tradition?
Read MoreLike how do you bid farewell to your most successful and arguably most valuable driver in a way that sets the team and its fans up for the next chapter once he leaves?
That was the challenge facing the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team.
Read MoreLike what do you do when your business and brand has become so addicted to chasing short-term innovation uplifts that it’s allowed its core business to be eroded?
Read MoreLike what do you do when you have a fractured global brand, communications, and marketing organisation, and are needing to support premium pricing while you aggressively expand distribution?
Read MoreLike what do you do when you are disproportionately reliant on paid search and find that your customers are booking accomodation but have no memory that it was through you?
Read MoreThere’s nothing like reclaiming a decades-long neglected garden to teach one about the creation and nurturing of things that last.
Read MoreEach step along the long, long hard journey to getting work out into the world is an opportunity to exercise our innate negativity bias and focus on what’s not working; to fall victim to group think; to feedback simply in order to have one’s voice and participation made felt; to add and complicate; to shave the edges off; to second-guess how people in the real world will (or will not) respond; to second-guess how other people in the organisation will (or will not) respond; to lose sight of the original intent and objective; and ultimately, to lose conviction and run out of fucks to give. When great work has to navigate this many steps, running the gamut of feedback at each any every one of them, we need better process, and better conversation.
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